


never wrote a letter (never took my true heart, never wrote it down)

by gendryw4ters



Series: tumblr drabbles and prompts and things and such [11]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: 'We Used To Wait' in case you were wondering, Angst, Canon Era, M/M, Multi, Post-War, Ron comes home; kind of, Speirs-centric, this was HEAVILY inspired by arcade fire btw, to find that things have changed a lot, which i dont often dabble in so this was exciting indeed, with an......... Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 07:39:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11755152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendryw4ters/pseuds/gendryw4ters
Summary: He used to write to them.He would write to them all the time, countless letters; pages and pages filled with tales of his travels. He would write to them of people, of sounds and sights and smells and feelings. He would write to them of love.





	never wrote a letter (never took my true heart, never wrote it down)

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from Arcade Fire's We Used To Wait, which was hugely influential in the writing of this (and also! would recommend thinking about them when listening to it hot damn)
> 
> anyways, i hope you enjoy it! no disrespect intended x

He used to write to them.

He would write to them all the time, countless letters; pages and pages filled with tales of his travels. He would write to them of people, of sounds and sights and smells and feelings. He would write to them of love.

Though that was then, and this was now.  

Now, when the flashing lights and agonised screams of fighting one war too many had all but consumed him. Now, when the comforts of sleep eluded him, and the nightmares had begun to ebb into his everyday life, and the desire to write had been lost amongst the swirling smoke and golden haze of coping mechanisms his mother would have scolded him for.

He couldn’t write to them anymore- how could he? He wasn’t a writer, he was a soldier. Fighting, fighting,  _fighting._ He was already dead. He couldn’t write to them, couldn’t tell them how he felt- how they had made him feel. What good were letters from the dead? Riddled with empty promises of coming home and of kisses by the fireplace and of hope-  _hope_ ; how he hated the word. What hope was there? This war would never end- this war; fought in suffocating jungles and ruined towns, was one Ron was sure he’d be fighting until his dying breath.

Only that it wasn’t. 

It was  _over._

And Ron, Ron was lost. 

The flashing lights, the agonised screams- they had stopped; during his waking hours, at least. The world was… Quiet. Eerie.

And he was alone.

The decision to see them again wasn’t made by him, it was made  _for_ him; desires he had long since buried within himself clawing their way back to the surface and compelling him to do something, anything, to break free of the limbo he had begun to drift through. He’d boarded the train that morning, not bothering to call in advance. Ron Speirs was not a man who came with warnings.

Ron’s stomach was churning.

It hadn’t taken him long to find them, all he’d had to do was ask around town a couple of times and he’d soon been pointed in the direction of the house belonging to the man of many voices and his too-kind husband.  _Husband._ That was when it had started; the uncomfortable knot in his chest only tightening with each step he took towards the heart of the pristine little neighbourhood that the two of them had settled within.

The two of them.

They’d been a three, once. 

The sound of children’s laughter and the bark of a dog catches him off guard and rips him away from his thoughts, plunging him into a vision he found to be indescribably worse.

Carwood Lipton and George Luz had just rounded the corner, seemingly on their way home from a trip to the park. A little girl sat on the former’s shoulders, babbling merrily about whatever had grabbed her attention that very second, and the latter was clinging tightly to the end of a leash- being tugged harshly forward by a dog that was arguably too big for his owner to handle.

Ron tried his best to duck out of their way before he could be seen, the overwhelming urge to throw up at the sheer domesticity of it all becoming almost too much for him to cope with. They didn’t need him, didn’t want him- he wondered if they ever truly had.

A dog colliding with his legs, followed by a cry of “oh god sorry, he’s just a puppy, he get’s so excited and-” had soon put an end to his plans of escape.

 _“Ron…”_  

And Speirs hated that. Hated the way George could just breathe his name like that, as if he still cared- as if he’d  _missed_ him. Hated the way that the mere sight of him had wiped the smiles off of both of their faces, had Lipton lowering the little girl back to the ground and telling her to run home ahead of them. 

Hated the way that both of them had begun to approach with arms outstretched, cautious, as if approaching an injured wild animal.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he hissed- living up to the imagery in a typically splendid Ron Speirs fashion. “Don’t- I’m- I’m just going to go. You obviously- you have something here, it’s not-”

“Ron… You… You stopped writing to us…”

“You’re happy you’re- you got what you wanted, both of you. Got the home, got the kid, got the dog. I’ve got- I don’t have a place here, I’m-”

“Are you quite finished?” A hand clasped tightly around his wrist, tighter than it had done around the dog leash- George Luz’s warm voice washing over him like the tide. He sounded older, more mature, though he’d retained that gentle teasing tone of his, the one only he could ever master.

“If anything, we should be the ones angry with you,” Lipton added, stepping forward to take George’s other hand in his own. Protective. Ready to drag him away the second things turned ugly-  _if_ they turned ugly. Classic Lipton, Ron almost smiled to think of it, never one to start fights, but always the one to finish them.

“I’m not- I’m not angry,” Ron found himself protesting, instead of biting back like he’d expected himself to. “Actually I- I just…” 

And something else was now seeping into his veins; not bitterness, not fury. 

Love.

“Actually… I just… Missed you.”

It was George who did most of the talking after that, always on hand to fill the silences that would otherwise hang above them like dark clouds on a stormy winter’s eve. Small talk about the weather, about Ron’s journey there, about the dog (she was some kind of collie mongrel, he reckoned, and Ron was inclined to agree). He kept it up all the way to the doorstep, and all the way into the kitchen. Kept it up while the water boiled and the little girl was sent to play with the neighbours’ kids for a couple of hours.

Only stopped once they’d all sat down around the table. 

Motioned for Ron to start.

**Author's Note:**

> me: wishes speirs would just talk about his feelings. hopes that's what his next steps would be
> 
> anyways! hope you enjoyed it! i dont often dabble in canon-era so this was nice to do aah
> 
> much love! x


End file.
